Bean (Pie)

By Sagirah Shahid

Soaked in water,

dried beans have the potential for holiness.

 

When I was a girl

I watched my mother fall in love with god

as if god were a dying language.

 

Every morning before dawn

she would find transliterations

of prayers in wet beans

and whisper them into

the batter of a devoted pie.

 

The pie only knew how to pronounce

the sounds of god. As it baked,

 

I knew it was enough for me

to purify my nostrils in this fashion,

splash the pearly gateways of my mind

with the smokiness of a pie’s promise.

 

To appreciate a beautiful moment

you have to know its absence,

taste the quality of life

burning down your throat

long after it’s gone

 

and this does not mean

you get to summon it back

no,

 

beauty doesn’t work that way. And like any daughter

I reflect on how

I have a hard time recalling

the way the base of my throat is supposed to catch

the brimming sounds of this particular Quranic

verse—but miraculously

 

I have managed to memorize

the scent of every home I prayed in.

 

Sagirah Shahid is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based writer. She is a 2015-2016 winner of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series Award in poetry, Sagirah’s work has been published or is forthcoming in: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Mizna, The Fem, Bluestem, For Harriet, Black Fox, Alyss, Paper Darts, Switchback, and Qu Literary Journal.